


Come home in the car you love

by stegrits



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dean Winchester Deserves to be Happy, First Kiss, First Time, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Episode: s15e20 Carry On, This is pretty short but it's all been living in my head rent free
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:35:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28973682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stegrits/pseuds/stegrits
Summary: Then, one day, the highway turns into a smaller road, then another, across a bridge, and Dean realizes he's now driving parallel to the ocean, blue-green and sparkling. He slows the Impala slightly and rolls down the windows, the air sticky and warm.(It turns out, Heaven is actually pretty nice now)
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 52





	Come home in the car you love

As far as Dean can tell, Heaven is now pretty much the same as Earth, except there's no potholes or trash by the side of the road. Bobby said there were no walls up here anymore, and the more Dean drives the more he sees it's true. Miles and miles go by, full of overhead signs with sometimes contradictory directions to different cities, plenty of exit ramps he doesn't take and even other cars of various makes and models. Dean wonders where they're going. 

It's all normal enough that sometimes he forgets he's dead. He should feel guilty about that, an ugly little voice deep down tells him. Guilty he left Sam, about the things he left unfinished or unsaid, but Dean wonders if it might be possible to out-drive that voice, in time, or at least quiet it a little. What he feels mostly now is relief, the massive weight of something dark and crushing receding from his shoulders like a slow tide.

For pretty much the first time in his life, no one needs anything from Dean Winchester. 

So, he and Baby continue down the nameless highway, passing tall, neon signs for fast food places and almost empty rest stops and long stretches of nothing but cornfields.

Time passes differently, he does notice that, the days stretching too long and the nights short and clear. It never rains. The Impala doesn't run low on gas until several hours after it first occurs to Dean that it should, and the gas station that appears soon after doesn't have a logo on its sign or a way to actually pay for the gas, but the pump works all the same.

After a few more of the short nights pass, Dean does get tired, but it's actually more like the memory of being tired than real exhaustion. Once the sun sets, he curls up in the backseat of the Impala at one of the rest stops, having found a lumpy gray blanket that definitely wasn't laying there before. He falls asleep instantly under that intimately familiar roof and doesn't dream. In the morning, if you can really call it morning, he realizes that the increasingly annoying twinge in his left shoulder isn't there anymore, which he could really get used to. He wonders if all of his other scars are gone, but doesn't check. 

Instead, he takes a closer look at Baby. There's a big box of tapes tucked behind the passenger's seat, some of which are of bands Dean has never heard of and some he would swear don't actually exist. There are definitely fewer weapons in the trunk than he remembers, but that seems OK.

He's not lonely. When he was younger, there were a lot of times like this, after Sammy left, driving from violent hunt to violent hunt with only the occasional static-filled voicemail from John. But Dean is surprised to realize he had forgotten the peace of the road, some of the little sounds of the Impala. There's no one to explain himself to here, no pressure to say or do anything. 

Eventually, he spots a sign that says "Diner," and stops, finding a few other cars scattered in the small parking lot. It's a real diner too, shiny metal exterior and slightly sticky menus. Dean's not sure if the lone, middle-aged waitress with a dark, messy bun is dead too, invented by Jack, or made up by Dean's brainbro to fill in the empty spaces. The same goes for the old man sitting at the counter and the young couple giggling quietly in the corner booth.

By the time he finishes his burger he wonders if it really matters either way. 

Deans keeps driving after that, and thinks about everything, except Cas. For now, he keeps that in a big metaphorical folder that says "Do not open." There will be time for it, another voice inside of him says. He likes this voice a hell of a lot better.

So he wonders what Sam's up to, if Jack has brought back Eileen yet, about a thousand past choices he made, they all made, good and bad. Is it the time and distance that makes all of these things easier to think about now?

Dean wonders if he'll ever drive back the way he came and sit at his parent's kitchen table, or if eventually he'll reach the edge of Heaven's map.

\---

Then, one day, the highway turns into a smaller road, then another, across a bridge, and Dean realizes he's now driving parallel to the ocean, blue-green and sparkling. He slows the Impala slightly and rolls down the windows, the air sticky and warm.

He's on a thin sort of island, he thinks. Sam would know what it's called, if he was here, but it's all right that Dean doesn't.

After another mile or so he sees it, a slightly weathered wooden building that can only be a bar. The sign out front simply says "Dean's," and he laughs out loud for the first time as he pulls into the parking lot. He peers inside the windows and finds everything inside seems to be in good shape, down to the glasses behind the long bar. 

Around back, not immediately obvious down a short, tree-lined drive, there's a house, nothing fancy but more than nice enough, and a few outbuildings, one of which could eventually be a garage.

There's a key in the front door and to be honest, Dean was getting a little tired of driving.

He starts with the house first, and finds that, under a good layer of dust easily removed with the abundance of cleaning supplies from under the kitchen sink, everything seems to be in working order. 

There's a big living room with comfortable couches, a fireplace and vaguely nautical prints on the walls, which he supposes is appropriate. The kitchen is relatively modern, and occasionally cold beers just appear in the fridge, which is pretty sweet although Dean's not sure he can actually get drunk anymore. He doesn't feel much of a need to try.

There's also two bedrooms, each with their own bathrooms, but Dean takes the one with the greenish walls toward the back of the house. In the closet are clothes in his size.

Best of all is the screened-in back porch, as long as the house itself, overlooking a tiny section of dune and then the ocean proper. Dean spends he doesn't know how long just staring at the waves, trying to remember the last time he was at the beach. 

When he's done all he can do to the house, he drives a little down the road to a collection of several houses not unlike his own, a pizza place and a few other stores including an old hardware shoo, which of course is exactly what he was looking for.

Inside, Richard, who makes a vague reference to President Carter and therefore is definitely dead, just happens to have some old tools in the back he's more than happy to let Dean borrow, as long as he promises not tell the whole town about it. Dean finds himself wondering what the "whole town" is like, but there's plenty of time for that after he gets the bar up and running.

He puts a lot of time into it too, remembering plenty of things Bobby told him or that he picked up along the years. He sands and refinished every surface in the bar, fixes some of the tables and chairs, and paints most of it according to Richard's recommendations.

One night, he finally runs out of things to fix and is sitting watching the sun go down into the water, replaying that conversation over and over in his mind when he figures he might as well give it a shot.

"Cas, if you're-" 

But then he stops. Cas has avoided him this long, even though he has to know where Dean is. Dean's never been that great with words, he reminds himself, and what is he expecting anyway? That Cas would-

"Hello, Dean," Cas says, suddenly standing next to him and looking out at the water too. 

\---

It should be awkward. It is a little, for the first few minutes, and then suddenly it's not. They talk for hours, the night stretching on and on and their talking punctuated only by the waves booming in the soft darkness beyond. Cas tells Dean about the things he's seen, what it was like in the beginning. He has an unintentionally funny story about the first whale that makes Dean laugh until his sides hurt, mostly just because it feels stupidly good to hear Cas' voice.

Then Dean tells Cas things he suspects he knows already, but Cas listens to them again all the same, about John or Sam, events or people he hasn't thought about in years. 

Cas finally recounts the day he saved Dean from Hell. There had been times when Dean did remember parts of it, in gasping nightmares, but he has always wanted to hear Cas' side. It sounds a lot nicer that way. 

At some point, the sun finally does come up and after that there are times when they work together in almost complete silence, cleaning and polishing and setting up until there's nothing left to do but flip the "Closed" side to "Open." 

Surprisingly, people do come. There's a man in what looks like a World War II uniform driving a beautiful Chevy that Dean regrets not asking about. But the man only has one beer and says he's got to get home to his sweetheart. 

And then there's the two young women Dean is pretty sure hold hands under the bar when they think he's not looking. Except, when they wave goodbye from the doorway, he realizes they aren't young at all, but rather gray haired and deeply wrinkled. 

There's also a woman who calls Cas an angel after he brings her a cup of tea while Dean gets ready to replace her tire. 

"Yeah, he really is," Dean agrees. 

\---

There's a pier Dean had only glimpsed before, a little past the hardware store, but had been to busy to check out before. It's very easy to convince Cas to come with him.

The pier turns out to have a ferris wheel at the end, the blue lights decorating it almost the same bright color as Cas' eyes. There is faint carnival music too, which Dean would usually find creepy but somehow it seems to fit the situation. The sun is just starting to go down now and the breeze is soft.

"How do we-" Cas starts to ask, but the ferris wheel comes to a gentle stop right in front of them, the door of the little car opening on its own.

At the top of the ride, it's pretty much a movie-perfect scene, and maybe that's what makes it possible for Dean to look Cas right in the face, the sense that this is the moment. 

"After everything, how could you think I didn't, that I couldn't-" Dean starts. 

"Well, you did give me a lot of very mixed signals," Cas says, but he lets Dean kiss him all the same. Cas' lips taste like sea salt and he starts laughing halfway through. The ferris wheel doesn't take them back down until they both want it to. 

"Cas, are you still an angel?" Dean asks as they head back to the car, fingers sort of brushing like teenagers, trying to get an idea of where they stand.

"Sort of," Cas says, not unhappily, and Dean can't help but laugh at the typically Cas-ian answer.

Things appear in the house after that, soft blue sweaters in the closet of the other bedroom and hot pizzas in the kitchen and a copy of the Odyssey in Greek on one of the living room end tables. (Dean knows that's what it is because he asks).

"Where'd this come from?" Dean asks one morning as he walks into the kitchen, holding up a mug that's shaped like a white and orange cat. He could have sworn wasn't on the counter yesterday, but Cas just shrugs a shoulder (he doesn't sleep but somehow still manages to be grumpy in the mornings) so Dean learns not to question these things so closely.

He figures this is Cas' way of making himself at home.

The days start to have a dreamlike quality to them, an ever shifting sense of time. One day, out of nowhere, it starts to snow despite the clear sky and the fact the weather has been warm up until this point, and Cas refuses to come in even when his ears turn pink, just watching the flakes come down. Dean only coaxes him in with the suggestion of seeing if they can get the kitchen to conjure up some hot chocolate.

Later, they leave the fire burning low in the living room and tumble into bed, learning every part of each all over again. 

\---

"Hey, are there any priests up here, or?" Dean asks, an indeterminate time later.

"Is this the beginning of a joke?" Cas asks, eyebrow wrinkling slightly as he tries to anticipate the set up. He's concentrating on rolling out a pie crust anyway, the faintest smudge of flour along his cheekbone. 

"No, I mean, I thought maybe we should, you know," Dean manages. His face might actually be on fire, but he's determined.

"Yes," Cas replies. 

"Yes there are or yes-"

"Yes," Cas says again and pulls him in for a warm kiss. 

The pie does not make it to the oven, but Dean figures they have plenty of time for that.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Brainy" by the National. Never thought in this year of our Lord 2021 I'd write Supernatural fic, but here we are. Happy birthday, Dean Winchester.


End file.
